A/N: Hopefully just the beginning of a series of chronological, rather serious, hopefully meaningful Haar/Jill drabbles. Originally posted to fe_contest on LJ.
Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to Nintendo, not me.
Perhaps it is only his imagination. The camp seems oddly quiet. But all is as it is every other night of the expedition – men laugh close around a hot fire, ale from the bustling port nearby warming their insides. It is a rare opportunity they have here, stationed near a living town in relative peace. The loss of one of their number, since it was not due to death, does not seem to concern them much.
Jill doesn't like ale. Haar would have sat with her off to the side of the other soldiers. If she were there, perhaps they would recline against their wyverns and talk about nothing. They'd have each other for warmth. If she were there.
Shivering, Haar sighs, trying the fill the oppressive quiet with memories instead of uncertainties. Jill is her own person now, with her own confidence, her own independence.
Leaves rustle with a gentle breeze. Her wyvern stretches and yawns, spreading its tired wings, and Jill touches the beast's cool scales, grateful for the company. Tittering animals surround them. The crashing of waves echoes up the cliff. The clear night sky beams oppressively overhead. Distant and cold, the stars glitter just as they did when she was young and would stare at them in awe and admiration, usually with her father or Haar by her side.
Jill leans back against her wyvern's side, only a thin travel blanket over her for warmth. Her mouth is dry, and the nearby ocean is no comfort.
Exhaustion rather than silence lulls her eyes closed, and she dreams of home.
He writes her a letter one night. The contents are simple, straightforward, but he knows that it would make her smile. He has a feeling, deep in his heart, that she is lonely. Her very confidence and stubbornness that enabled her flight are also sure to alienate her from whoever she may meet on her journey.
He wonders if she's been eating enough, sleeping enough. Smiling enough. It's been months since he's seen her at all, much less seen her old smile, the one of real joy. The distance between them never has felt so great as it does now, when he realizes that someone else could quite possibly catch the renewal of that smile before he does.
"Hey, Jill?"
She turns and sees the bright-eyed girl, Mist, looking hopefully up at her. She holds out her hand, and in her palm is a pair of shiny silver coins.
"My brother gave me these," she says. "Bengion's port is sure to have some wonderful places to shop. We'll be there for a few days before the apostle's retinue feels ready to leave for Sienne. I was thinking… well, maybe we could go shopping together. You know. Buy a dress or something."
Jill can only stare at her in silence. Throughout the voyage, very few of the Crimeans willingly spoke to her, much less in friendship. Mist is the only one who seems genuinely happy at her presence, even amongst those who are not antipathetic, merely indifferent.
Unwillingly, Jill blushes. "I've never worn a dress before."
"Never?" Mist gasps. "But, Jill, you're so pretty! Oh, we must go! And you can keep it and wear it whenever we're not fighting… And maybe when you go home - "
An unwelcome pause suddenly occupies the space between them. Home is not a comfortable topic. Mist's cheeks turn pink, and she stammers out that she only meant, she only wondered… But Jill is no longer listening. She knows when Mist stops talking by the awkward stillness in her face, her mouth slightly open. Jill smiles sadly and shakes her head.
One evening, he comes across Shiharam in a closeted corner of the keep, sitting at a desk with one flickering candle illuminating parchment and quill. Haar coughs to announce his presence, then salutes to his general when he turns around.
"Haar," Shiharam says, and his voice is scratchy and weary. "You should not be up at this hour. You need your rest in these trying times."
"I could say the same to you, General."
"Please. Let us drop the formality and titles."
Haar nods toward the desk. "What are you working on?"
Silence lingers for a moment before he answers. "A letter to Jill."
Haar thinks of his own letter. He had never received a response. Both Shiharam and Haar know that the letter on the table now, inked with love and composed with care, soon to be delicately, carefully folded and sent with a messenger for exorbitant coin, will never know Jill's gaze.
As they delve deeper in Daein, Jill wants to peer under ever enemy soldier's helmet, check the sky every few minutes for a familiar battalion of wyverns, leave some sort of message or landmark, so that they know she's been here. She's been here, but she has not returned. She knows this full well.
But there is no time for such trifles. She does not want to examine the corpses she and her new friends are leaving behind.
"They say your girlfriend's defected to the enemy, Haar."
A lone, drunk solider waves a tankard at him from his place beside the fire. Haar clenches his fist around the axe he is busy cleaning.
"Someone saw 'er with them Crimeans. That head o' fire's sure hard to miss. What're you going to do, if we have to fight? You gonna kill your girl? Maybe she's forgotten you an' the General. Maybe she belongs to some other man now, like she should. Maybe she - "
Haar's muscles contract. They seem to move of their own will, for he does not remember telling his body to tense so severely, to fly into action, to throw the axe until it trembles mere inches away from the man's throat.
"You filth," Haar growls. "You will never speak like that again. You will not shame the General's daughter, you – you - "
Haar blinks. The fireside is empty. All the soldiers are abed, and he is alone in the night.
Every time she closes her eyes, she sees red. She sees the wound in her father's flesh, and it is her hand on the end of the blade that caused it. (It hadn't been, really. She hadn't watched.) She didn't – doesn't – never wants to know.
But she knows his corpse. She sees it as if from a distance, and she feels Ike's eyes on her, too. He is a kind man, and she knows he wishes to speak with her, to give her leave, but all she doesn't want his company. There are only two people she can turn to, now. One of them is dead before her and the other so far that she wonders if she will ever see him again. Perhaps he, too, is dead by her extended hand.
The thought is so terrifying that she feels ice slide like quicksilver through her veins. She does not shiver, she does not fall to her knees, she does not cry. The cold is deeper even than that. She is too cold to tremble, too frozen to fall, and the tears are iced into her heart, and all she can do is wait.
She looks like a spirit when he sees her. At such a distance, through whirling snow and an army of soldiers, he recognizes her not by her shock of red hair, but rather by the way she holds herself. She sits on her wyvern like a queen of the dark, snow-speckled skies. She is barely twenty feet in the air, keeping pace with the main Crimean army. Perhaps she is a lookout.
As small as she seems to his tired eye, he knows that straight back, that stubbornly raised chin. The relief that floods through him makes him weak, immobilized with gratitude to the spirits, to the Crimeans, to Jill herself, to whatever it was that kept her alive.
Captain. Captain!
She can't hear anything but that one word. On her lips, it comes naturally. But it is jarring, bewildering to hear it from Haar. Should she not be flattered, perhaps, that she is in a position of authority over him? As if she is the one who knows all the answers, all the right things to say, like he always seems to?
Jill frowns. She cannot picture it.
"Captain Haar!" she shouts across the camp.
He turns around, smiles at her amidst the flurry of faces.
"You responded," she says cheerfully. "Captain Haar it is, then. You're never going to get me to call you without title."
"Never?" he teases. Something unusual is in his grin. "That's quite a long time, Captain."
Jill knows her face is turning red, but she feels an agreement between them, an ease. She has been too long without such opportunity for smiles.
The first time they are truly alone since the beginning of the war is when they are distant, far from the central camp, out patrolling the night skies together at Ike's command. It is a deliberate pairing, Haar suspects. The boy is a thoughtful leader.
They land together to give their wyverns a rest. Silence reigns. Neither of them know how to begin in this unique, private moment, for there are too many miserable thoughts, too many untouched feelings. At last, Haar takes her hand. He would have touched her shoulder instead, but he wanted to share the warmth of skin, not feel the sharp chill of her armor.
Her small fingers tighten around his larger ones. Both of their hands are equally rough and calloused. Instinctively, almost accidentally, Haar pulls her into an embrace, and they clutch each other tight. Despite their armor, it is a comfort long overdue yet never forgotten.
"I missed you," Jill admits. Her voice is muffled against him.
Haar cannot speak. He holds her more fiercely for a second and prays she understands.